60 Acres And Growing

Day 312: Overnight, the Alder Lake Fire increased in size to sixty acres, spreading to the southeast. Today as I stood on the shore of the lake near the site of the former community of Reliance, I could hear the ground crews at work with chainsaws, the whining burr of their blades occasionally punctuated with the crack of a tree falling to earth. As gaps appeared in the smoke, I could see where individual trees had torched, their needles brown but hanging on, as is often the case with Douglas fir. These are old trees, 200' tall in many cases, with boughs only on their upper portions. Beneath them, an understory of brush ignites quickly and the fire moves on.

Doug fir has an amazing capacity for surviving fire. The bark on a 200' tree may be four to six inches thick, as insulated against flame as a living thing can be. In fact, fire contributes to the health of a Doug fir forest by removing the competitive understory. As contradictory as the idea might seem on the face of it, lightning-caused fires play a significant role in keeping our state's famous evergreens growing strongly. Fire, timber interests aside, can be beneficial in the long term, both for the woods and for wildlife as old material burns out and newer, less competitive browse springs up in its wake. It's part of Nature, even though we don't want to see it in our neighborhood.